Believers
in Daniel’s prophecies have been waiting to see if it
will happen in the last days ...

End
of the World Empires

Daniel 2:44 - “And
in the days of these kings, shall the God of heaven set up a
kingdom, which shall never be destroyed ... But it shall break
in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand
for ever.”

Through prophet Daniel, God revealed to king Nebuchadnezzar
of Babylon the succession of kingdoms till the coming of God’s
kingdom. God used the vision of a great image, whose parts of
different metals were to represent the kingdoms of the earth.
Since we live now at the end of time, we can look back on the
pages of history and add a date to their beginning and end:

Head of gold - Babylon, 605 - 539BC

Breast of silver - Medo-Persia, 539 - 331BC

Belly of brass - Grecia, 331 - 168BC

Legs of iron - Rome, 168BC - 476AD

Feet of iron and clay - Nations of Europe, 476AD
- End

Flying stone - Second Coming of Christ ---

Prophet Daniel received the first vision of the world empires with the metal image during the second year of King Nebuchadnezzar. (Daniel 2) Around 50 years later, on the first year of King Belshazzar, who was co-regent with father Nabonidus, God gave Daniel a second prophetic view of the world empires to expand the understanding of prophecy. (Daniel 7:1-28)

Lion - Babylon, 605 - 539BC

Bear - Medo-Persia 539 - 331BC

Leopard - Grecia 331 - 168BC

Dreadful beast - Rome 168BC - 476AD

Little horn - Papal Rome 538 - 1798AD

To seal the prophetic line, it was added:

For Babylon: "Thou art this head of gold." (Dan. 2:38)
For Medo-Persia, two years later the angel said: "The ram which thou sawest having two horns are the kings of Media and Persia." (Dan. 8:20)
For Grecia, the angel continued: "And the rough goat is the king of Grecia: and the great horn that is between his eyes is the first king." (Dan. 8:21) Alexander the Great on the battle of Arbela, 331BC, destroyed the mighty persian army.

Daniel also saw scenes of events taking place in heaven during the time of the end. "I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool, his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him: thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him: the judgment was set , and the books were opened." (Daniel 7:9, 10) "One like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days." (Dan. 7:13) Jesus the Advocate to stand with mercy and justice for His children on earth. (1 John 2:1) Starting with Abel, the first martyr of the faith, the Book of Life is certified with the names of those to be rescue from earth at the Second Coming. At the end of the Judgment, the Lord says: "And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be." (Rev. 22:12)

To continue the line of earthly powers, God
called John the Revelator to expand upon the great important
powers, the ones that are in power in the last days. Papal
Rome, the fifth power, being and important and persistent
power, is described again as a leopard beast coming out of
the sea. (Rev. 13:1-10) "And the dragon gave him his power,
and his sit, and great authority." (Rev. 13:2) Pagan Rome
gave the Bishop of Rome his power, his throne, and kingly civil
power to rule over the people. On 533AD Emperor Justinian made
the Bishop of Rome the head of all churches, which took effect
on 538 when the ruling Arian Ostrogoths were expelled from
Rome; then Pope Vigilius took the throne as corrector of heretics
and head of the church.

The political power bestowed upon the Papacy lasted 1260 years until 1798 when Napoleon sent his armies to remove the temporal power from the Papacy. General Berthier entered Rome and on February 15, 1798, took Pope Pius VI prisoner and set up a republic in its place. "And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast." (Rev. 13:3) The deadly wound began to heal when Mussolini and Cardinal Gasparri signed the Lateran Treaty on February 11, 1929 creating Vatican City as an independent nation, and recognizing the Pope as a sovereign king. Today almost all nations have their embassies on Vatican City.

During the Dark Ages, when Pope Gregory IX (1227-1241) was at the helm, the councils of the church prohibited the Bible among the people. The prohibition grew stronger until anyone found with a Bible was accused of heresy and subject to torture and death. From there on, it became the rule until the Reformation came to restore God's freedom.

Papal Rome found in France a powerful allied where Rome's authority could be more effective under the feudal system and the one monarch controlling the nation. The forms of religion offered by the priests and prelates to the people were empty of the promises of forgiveness and eternal salvation freely given by the Savior. The precious truths of the Bible were replaced with oppressive human laws and traditions which eventually hardened their hearts and brought to their eyes the reality of deception, corruption and debasing iniquity.

The Reformation in Germany started around 1517 when Catholic monk Martin Luther found in the Scriptures the gospel of God's free grace, and enough light to discard the indulgences and the errors of Rome.

From John Calvin in Geneva, around 1553, the disciples of the Reformation penetrated the frontiers of France and in ten years were able to spread the teachings of the Bible to one million followers. The people were eager to find freedom from the rigidity of the Catholic Church and from the un-patriotic label of a link to Rome. A division came to be: the servants of Rome were called "papistes", and the followers of John Calvin were called "huguenots."

When King Henry II died in 1559, queen mother Catherine de Medici became a widow with four sons teenagers and younger. After the few days of the first son on the throne, the throne was given to the second son, Charles IX, only ten years old in 1560. As a child, the power was in the hands of mother Catherine, princes in-law and the Cardinal of Lorraine. In those years the tension between the Catholics and the Calvinist Huguenots was approaching the bursting point. Catherine convinced her son, the king, to accept the plan to exterminate the Huguenots on St. Bartholomew's day. On the night of August 24, 1572, at the sound of the bell from the church, the people of Paris went out to strike the house of every Huguenot. The massacre extended for two months all over France, cutting the life of an estimated seventy thousand victims. The massacre of St. Bartholomew came to be the turning point for France. The rest of the industrious huguenots and the preachers of the gospel fled the country.

A general decline settled over France to the point that at the end of the eighteen century France was poverty-stricken, sunken in debts, under heavy taxation and widespread misery. King Louis XVI only choice was to call an assembly of the Estates General, which was composed of three Estates: the clergy, the nobility, and the others forming the Third Estate. The meeting began May 5, 1789; but the majority of the members were from the Third Estate and pretty soon they rebelled, broke away, created their own convention and called it the "National Assembly." The liberals from the other Estate joined them to continue the assembly.

On July 14, 1789, Paris citizens stormed and
took the Bastille prison. This monument was built to commemorate
that victory.

On August 4, 1789, the deputies of the National Assembly renounced to their own privileges, and passed a decree to abolish feudalism: a first blow to the nobles and to the Papal power in France.

On August 27 they issued the "Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen," and proposed the concept of equality: Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.

On November, 1789, they voted to nationalize the lands of the church.

An elected Legislative Assembly began to function on October 1, 1791. Actions and reactions between the Assembly, Louis XVI, and the people gave rise to an enormous domestic turmoil most of the time, until the King was stripped out of all his powers and held in prison. Now they wanted a constitution for a republic.

On September 20, 1792, the new elected National Convention proclaimed the Republic and took control of the nation. To the same guillotine used for the enemies of the Revolution, Louis XVI was taken to cut his head on January 21, 1793.

On March 9, 1793, the National Convention established the Revolutionary Tribunal and gave ample executive powers to the Committee of Public Safety on April 6.

On September 17, 1793, the Convention passed the Law of Suspects, which would arrest and condemn almost everybody for a little suspicion. Prominent figure in the councils of the Reign of Terror, Maximilien Robespierre, from sending hundreds of people to the guillotine, he was sent to it also on July 28, 1794, and paid with his own head.

Those in charge of the French Revolution were not satisfied with the work of the guillotine and the blood running everywhere. At last they raised the arms of their intellectual power against the Deity and the Bible. From November 1, 1793, the proclamation went forward saying "there is no God" and prohibited the worship services and the rituals of the biblical teachings. To consolidate the atheistic principles of the Revolution they sat a woman upon a throne and presented her to the people as the Goddess of Reason, culminating with a festival inside the church and on the streets in honor of her on November 10, 1793.

Bible prophecy saw this beast, this atheistic communist power raising his head and "ascending out of the bottomless pit" with the French Revolution in 1793. (Rev. 11:7) The beast killed God's two witnesses: the Old Testament, and the New Testament of the Bible. "And their dead bodies shall lie in the streets of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt." (Rev. 11:8) "And they of the people... shall see their dead bodies three days and an half." (Rev. 11:9) In prophecy it is three years and a half, from November 1793, to June 17, 1797, when the Council of Five Hundred restored the free exercise of religious worship, and the two witnesses came alive again to give their testimony of the saving grace of God, fulfilling the time of the 3½ years.

The atheist communist power that came out of the bottomless pit in France, influenced by Voltaire, Rousseau and others, extended the power of their teachings to other nations, among them the Soviet Union and Cuba. In Egypt the Pharaoh told Moses: "Who is the Lord...? I do not know the Lord..." (Exo. 5:2) Still you can hear the same cry almost everywhere: "There is no God." The centers of education have adopted the theory of evolution just to deny the existence of the Creator God. Moreover the moral decay of Sodom is entering every level of society pushed in by homosexual activism. Even Pope Benedict XVI on his message of January 1, 2011, expressed his concern for the advance of "aggressive secularism."

When God gave the visions of Revelation to John on the island of Patmos, He took John to a point of view far ahead in the future, "into the wilderness" to complete the count of world powers. (Rev. 17:3) Then five world powers had fallen: "And there are seven kings; five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space." (Rev. 17:10) Five are fallen: 1-Babylon. 2-Medo-Persia. 3-Grecia. 4-Pagan Rome. 5-Papal Rome.

6- One is. Into the wilderness. The atheist-communist power.

7- Other not yet come. The power with two horns like a lamb, coming out of the earth. The United States of America. (Rev. 13:11-17) Not yet fully formed. When he shall speak as a dragon, and takes away the separation of church and state, the verses of Rev. 13:12-17 will be fulfilled in a short time.

8- He "was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven." (Rev.17:11) The only one that qualifies for this description is the number 5- Papal Rome-The Papacy, coming back as Supreme World Power for the last days of earth history.

The ten horns, the nations of the European Union, allow the Papacy to rule over them. "They have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast." (Rev. 17:13) When those nations see the disastrous consequences of their decision, they change their mind: "And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire." (Rev. 17:16)

With the appearance of the King of Kings, Christ Second Coming on the eastern sky, to rescue God's children, all the World Empires come to the end.

In the days of these kings ... France, Italy, England,
Germany, Spain, and all the nations and kingdoms of
Europe, Christ is coming back to rescue His people
from a world engulfed in total destruction; and then,
after a millennium of rest for the earth, He will come
back to establish God’s
kingdom on the earth made new. Rev. 16:18-21; Jer.
4:23-28; Rev. 20, 21.

A word for the last days...
Soon strife among the nations will break out with an intensity that we do not now anticipate. The present is a time of overwhelming interest to all living... They observe the intensity that is taking possession of every earthly element, and they realize that something great and decisive is about to take place, that the world is on the verge of a stupendous crisis. Maranatha, p. 174.

A word for the last days...
When our nation shall so abjure the principle of its government as to enact a Sunday law, Protestantism will in this act join hands with popery; it will be nothing else than giving life to the tyranny which has long been eagerly watching its opportunity to spring again into active despotism... Maranatha, p. 131.